Biotechnomancer
by Avetho
Summary: A lonely researcher inventing what few people use. A lonely soldier believes herself about to lose her life in her last stand. Both have a dream deep within, to become shining heroes of Humanity, defenders against forces seeking to subjugate mankind. They do not seek fame, preferring to stick their identities in the shadows and become the Paladin Saints that ask for none in return.


**A/N: This story takes place in the Halo universe in general and it has elements taken from Fate/Stay Night, Fate/Zero and the rest of the Nasuverse. Primarily it takes the Magecraft elements of Magical Circuits, Prana and Magecraft Spells and places them into a universe where they would be considered magic by the common citizen and some advanced form of biological mechanism by researchers, a universe where it has not yet been studied before and hardly ever an occurrence in history.**

**It also fudges a bit with how Imaginary Number Space works given the presence of Slipspace as well as the function and form of the Philosopher's Stone. In the end, Magecraft is just a part of this universe in select areas that could make sense if things are to be based upon Slipspace. One thing leads to another here and the first chapter will mainly be one of discovery and invention for the main character, a prologue really that sets up the start of the journey. One invention and random chance is the very thing that leads to the discovery of the start of everything that came from the Nasuverse. I should also mention that this version of Magecraft involves the Forerunners, Precursors and Flood to a very limited extent.**

**This story also pulls in some popular bits of media from our own time (20th-21st Century) and references those. One popular one that is a notable influence here is a music video by TWRP that was recently released called Starlight Brigade. See if you can spot the influences!**

**There is also body modification, mild digital espionage, coarse language, super-heroism as well as some character disguises used in this story. Our unofficial sibling main characters have several different personas they manage at a later point in the story. And yes, do try to guess who the unofficial sibling will be for our main character at the start here. I might drop a few hints here and there.**

**There are also a few pop culture references in the story that the characters themselves recognize and will comment on, since Halo takes place in our universe's timeline for the most part. And the Narrator will get annoyed by some characters sometimes and might say something snarky but won't break the fourth wall. Do try to use Professor Ozpin's voice from RWBY for the Narrator, I find the voice fitting. And for our main character, I find Gray Fullbuster's voice in the English Dub to fit well.**

**Oh well, enjoy the prologue!**

* * *

_Chapter 0 - A Prologue To Discovery_

* * *

_Arcadia, Procyon System, UNSC Space._  
_July 17th, 2549 CE_

* * *

On a quiet green planet orbiting a quiet star, there exists a quiet set of buildings up in the quiet hills near a quiet city resembling some kind of military compound.

*BOOM*

"GOD DAMMIT!"

As previously mentioned, this quiet compound is up on its own in the hills. In that building is a quiet researcher who-

*CRASH*

"WHAT THE FUCK WENT WRONG NOW?!"

-as previously mentioned, a quiet researcher who is studying the technology of an ancient race of beings whose technology far outpaced human technology even unto the modern age. The Forerunners, as the humans have taken to calling them, had many secrets even among themselves, their technology simply mind boggling especially in the fields of biology and the mind. They were the race who destroyed the Flood using the Halo Rings and saved each race from extinction by way of a Gamma Radiation explosion on a cosmic scale at the cost of themselves.

Within a building in this compound, the researcher is studying a piece of Forerunner technology and making good progress on it.

"Why won't this god damned thing work?!"

The man has messy short black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, high cheekbones and a well defined jaw. He is currently wearing a white lab-coat over a black sweatshirt as well as black sweatpants and white socks with black running shoes. His current facial expression is a mixture of frustration and confusion as well as some desperation and exhaustion. He currently has dark bags under his eyes. He is currently leaning forward with his elbows on a table, gripping his hair in his frustration and glaring balefully at something in front of him.

He is in front of a workbench littered with various measuring devices reading different things each, with an alien looking component in the center sitting atop a blue rubber pad. On the concrete floor near his right foot is the smoking remains of a multi-meter that presumably exploded, which would explain the prior explosion. Above the man and stabbed awkwardly into the wooden ceiling is what appears to be a tablet computer with odd looking connectors on the backside of the device. This presumably caused the crash earlier and we can assume it was flung from the man's hands by an unseen force.

"Why am I doing this again? Ugh! Forerunner technology sucks! Except it doesn't, since its so much more advanced and useful than ours. I'm pretty sure this is part of a Composer, I'm sure of it. Damn thing is harder to figure out than a Pocket Dimension."

The man suddenly stands up and begins pacing in front of the workbench whilst mumbling.

Perhaps an introduction is in order while we wait for the man to sort his mind out. This man's name is Adam Faraday. Born as the only son of the Faraday family on the planet of Arcadia, an Outer Colony planet in the UNSC, he dedicated his life as an independent researcher and has made quite a lot of money from his results. He is not very well known in the general field of research across the colonies, but that is mostly due to his liberal use of aliases from his own paranoia of becoming famous. He has a fear of crowded areas thanks to frequently becoming lost as a young child.

He was very imaginative as a child, very artistic as well, designing many interesting gizmos and building a few as well to show off to his parents. He was incredibly skilled in school at the Arts and in the STEM fields, making money early on as a designer as many larger building projects in recent years on Arcadia were designed by Adam himself. There are many things in the UNSC Research and Development departments that came from Adam and are in testing, although none have so far made it into use.

The device in front of Adam is indeed a fragment of a Composer, a Forerunner device that was made to bond man and machine as one. Adam is currently struggling to find a way to safely examine the fragment without injuring himself or destroying his redundant equipment. As of yet, he has hardly made any progress, at least progress that the average Joe would notice. Tucked into a pocket in his lab coat, there is a notebook that is filled with complex formulas that he has derived from the reactions by the Composer fragment, though as Adam has been known as a perfectionist, he is not satisfied with partial knowledge. But alas, even the best get fed up sometimes and attempt to do something that would lead even the most stoic of people to guffaw in shock. This particular task has been running Adam ragged for several weeks now and as we know, a human being at their wits' end is not a very smart one, though they can sometimes find themselves incredibly favored by fate.

*GROWL*

"That should be enough. Fuck this fragment, I'm gonna just try to make the thing now."

Ah. There it is. Adam seems to have given up on studying the fragment. He also appears to be hungry. He only lasted about twice as long as most other researchers would have bothered. Ah, but what is Adam trying to make, you may ask? We will just have to see, won't we? A hint however is that it relates to the mind and is related to the Composer for good reason.

"I've been trying to control my fucking Nanites for months now. I swear if this doesn't work I'm gonna lose my shit!"

In case you didn't notice, Adam is mentally exhausted. As we all should know, someone who is normally a kind individual can quickly turn irritable and disagreeable when they are low on sleep. Adam is a case-in-point of this. Normally playful in both action and speech, he quickly becomes blunt and crass when tired.

Adam makes his way out of the workshop building to what appears to be a kitchen. He quickly grabs several ingredients mostly consisting of vegetables as well as some milk and what appears to be flaked meat. He dumps it all into a blender to make a smoothie of sorts and ends up lazily drinking it even though his face says just how revolting the flavor is. He gulps down some water and gargles to clean his mouth, leaving the dirty dishes atop a small pile of dirty dishes that look to have been there for several days now. We follow Adam as he enters another building, this one being a sort of operating room where he goes to lay down on his front on a bed. He then places straps over his head to hold it in place.

The bed has a hole for his face that he looks through down at several monitors below him and he grabs some hand controls for what appear to be robotic arms and a camera on a third arm. The camera moves down to the back of his head with the two arms which pull back his hair and apply a sticky substance to make it stay out of the way. The area uncovered appears to be a small metal plate which is quickly removed to reveal a small device with a connector on the top and an empty space below it. One arm plugs something in to the connector and Adam takes the notebook from his pocket to open it in front of himself, beginning to type something on a keyboard in front of him for the next hour or so while occasionally turning the pages. He appears to be changing a large volume of code within the device as well as adding a very large amount of code.

Placing his hands back on the controls, the arms move elsewhere in the room and begin to assemble something that appears to fit within the empty space below the device in his head. The device is assembled and what appear to be small harpoon-like wires are retracted inside it. There is also what appears to be a seal on the side the wires exit on. The arms pick up the device and bring it to the back of his head. Adam then positions the device just inside the empty space, not quite there yet, and he quickly enters a terminal on the computer below him to type some commands. The arms begin to be controlled by the computer itself and two more arms move to secure Adam to the table with belts to prevent him from hurting himself physically should something run awry.

"Okay. It's now or never. No going back now. I can't go back. I've been working on this far too long."

Steeling his nerves, Adam voices a command in the affirmative. The arms bring down the new device which plugs in and makes contact with the old device. Adam winces in pain at first, then calms down before a new wave of pain hits as the wires fire off into different parts of his brain. One of the arms finds a vein in Adam's arm and injects a needle containing both a painkiller and some other substance that is related to his research. Adam begins to calm down a bit as his pain receptors dull and some readings on the monitors below him begin to change. One graph slowly starts to rise from zero and is entitled synchronization percentage, drawn in red. Seeing the rising numbers and the color change to orange, Adam begins to grin a wide and cocky grin before a sudden wave of pain assaults his already dulled senses causing him to cry out in pain. It recedes and Adam looks to see his synchronization had jumped suddenly to above sixty percent with the graph now a yellow color.

"Fuck. Yes. It fucking worked! Finally!"

Adam then voiced a command to let him go as the arms release the restraints on his limbs and he stands up straight, weathering the pain suddenly assaulting his lower skull for a moment. He leans his head back presumably to soak the wires in his spinal fluid and grits his teeth to weather the pain in the back of his head. He lays down in the bed on his back for several minutes while he lets the pain subside before he gets up again. He checks the monitor for the synchronization to find it stuck just above sixty percent. Humming in thought, he decides to test a theory and unplugs himself, plugging in a small module to the connector socket, then laying down on the bed to replace the plate over the device socket in his head and he gets back up to head out to yet another building.

This next building appears to be another workshop, especially given that it is connected to the workshop that is currently host to the Composer fragment. He walks inside and begins to configure a screen, connecting something to the device within his head. He then turns around and focuses on a box on one of the workbenches. The box is filled with a black powder substance and is marked with a blown up image of a nano sized round robot covered in tiny spines. The powder begins to churn slightly and Adam sighs, palming his face momentarily.

"I am such an idiot. How can one control Nanites unless they have an image of what they want them to make?"

He then heads back to the operating room and lays down once more, this time with his head tilted further down. He controls the arms and makes them hold back hair lower down on his head, removing another small plate and inserting a device with what appears to be a contact data connector on it, snugly fitting inside the port with a small space open above it. Another plate is placed atop it, this time with the same connector making up its center, and the plate is sealed down just as the one higher on his head was. The arms retract and Adam connects a cable to the new device.

"Okay, time to load some schematics in this baby."

Adam pulls up a tablet from one of the tables in the operating room and he begins transferring a load of files to the new device in his head. He feels a tingle in the back of his head and notes that down with a smaller notepad in the other side of his lab coat. He also checks off hypotheses of the earlier operation about what he would feel afterwards. Once the tablet notifies of its completion, Adam disconnects the wire and walks back to the second workshop. Upon his arrival he begins to focus on his memories, specifically the data in the new module. He sets his mind on a basic skateboard shape, finding the powder to roughly form into the shape of a skateboard, though the shape is a bit skewed and isn't straight.

"Is this because my brain doesn't work on the same data format as my computer system?"

He refocuses on the skateboard shape but uses one from his own memory instead, finding the skateboard to be a different skewed shape this time, so he retries with the loaded model from the tablet, finding the shape yet another different type of skewed from the first two attempts.

"Okay, must be my low sync ratio, then. Perhaps since its the brain, I need to rewire? I have good neuroplasticity so this shouldn't be too hard."

He notes that down in the small notepad. Now, I will be the first to say this begins to get repetitive, so I will summarize a lot of his activities. Adam takes the next few days to control the Nanites with his mind and practices shaping them more arbitrarily. In just a week, he manages to get his sync ratio above seventy five percent.

* * *

_July 20th, 2549 CE_

* * *

"Oh? My sync is in the green now? That's wonderful. Okay, now to shape it with a schematic."

He tries to shape the Nanites into a skateboard once more. The Nanites pour out of the box again to form something like a skateboard and end up coalescing as a skateboard that is all black in color. He takes a step onto it to test it but finds it to be all solid.

"Hah. Okay, resolution could use some work. Perhaps defining different materials as well as smaller complex structures once I fix the resolution problem?"

By the day's end, Adam's skateboard is now not one solid part but doesn't roll very well.

"It's a start, I guess. So now I just have to do a schematic with multiple materials and higher complexity."

* * *

_July 21st, 2549 CE_

* * *

The next morning, Adam sets about to modify the skateboard schematic using the tablet in the operating room. He added bearings to the skateboard and then created a second skateboard schematic to test out an electric motor to see if that would work, especially given his control over the Nanites. Wandering back to the workshop, he began his test.

"Okay, skateboard with bearings."

He hopped on, but then promptly fell on his back as the skateboard hit one of the walls. It seems Adam forgot that this was his first time riding a skateboard. So noting his successes in the notepad, omitting his blunder, he refocused on the skateboard to swap it out with the motor design. He then hopped on gently and noticed the resistance of the motor. Cautiously willing it to move using the electric power wirelessly supplied to the Nanites, the skateboard did nothing for a moment. As Adam was about to give up and step off, the skateboard jolted forward and he fell once again.

"Okay, ouch. So, threshold for movement? Or just insufficient sync ratio?"

Deciding to test this, Adam dismissed the skateboard and had the electric motor with the wheels from the skateboard schematic assemble on the worktable beside the box. Adam picked up a multi-meter to measure voltage on the motor, placing the probes on the motor terminals. Willing the motor to move, Adam stared at the multi-meter, showing it reading a solid zero up until the motor jerked forward and the volts began to climb and steady at around twelve.

"Okay, that settles it. Insufficient sync ratio. Or it could also be that the Nanites right now are not able to send the power immediately. Could it just be a buildup of system latency?"

* * *

_July 22nd, 2549 CE_

* * *

Adam fiddled with the power setup in the workshop over the next few days, ending up building a capacitor array between the Nanite power terminal and the compound's power grid. This lowered the latency a small amount and allowed the voltage to reach the intended number very quickly. He then focused on his lack of sync ratio, finding it resting at just under eighty percent and not climbing.

"Can I look at my own body with the Brainlink? I should be able to, it is wired directly into my nerves after all."

So Adam began to focus his mind on the Brainlink, which is what the entire module in his upper skull is called. His focus yields him a vague map of his own nervous system, which is what he expected, however extended focus led him to notice a shadow resting underneath his nerves that is not being used. Continued observation lead to no conclusive results, so Adam began to test what it might be, noting down everything about it that he could.

* * *

_July 25th, 2549 CE_

* * *

With a new subject of research, Adam sank a few days into trying to connect to the shadow nervous system as he began to refer to it in his notes. By the final day, Adam decided that trying something completely stupid was the best idea. He walked into his workshop to connect his Nanites to the Brainlink physically as well as to his mid back where he found a 'shadow nerve center'.

"Okay, this might be the stupidest thing I've done but I haven't slept and I am out of options."

No, he was not out of options but as earlier said, sometimes the dumbest but luckiest times in one's daily life is when they are most exhausted. So Adam then shocked himself. Yes, he drained power directly into the Brainlink and the 'shadow nerve center' in his back. He did not spasm however, but he did bite down on his lip to stop himself from crying in pain. While doing so, he focused using the Brainlink on the 'shadow nerves' and visualized forcing them open as if they were unused blood vessels and sending power through them. The capacitor bank then ran out of power and the pain instantly went away.

"Wow. What a shocker. Let's see if that did anything."

Ignoring the pun, Adam focused the Brainlink on those 'shadow nerves' to find them no longer shadows, but being open veins of some sort. He visualized the energy inside him moving through the veins and felt a tingle all over his body as energy coursed through those veins. He noted this all down in his notepad.

"Now that I get a second look at these vein thingies, they feel more like electrical circuits to me, but the energy doesn't feel like electricity at all. What the heck are they?"

Adam then decided on calling them Energy Circuits, with the energy being called Internal Energy. Very imaginative, I know, so Adam set about to rest his body even though his mind is energetic right now.

* * *

_July 28th, 2549 CE_

* * *

The following morning, he pushed the energy into his hand with the intention of making it settle in the skin. Feeling his hand burn, Adam did the natural reaction of swinging it around in the hopes of cooling it off, but ended up slamming his hand into the corner of his nightstand. Pausing for a moment, Adam checked the state of his hand, finding no damage having been done to his skin although the hand hurt on the inside. He noted this down.

Adam took the day to focus that energy into his skin with the same intentions, as well as in his bones. He gladly received the feeling of his body burning which he bit his lip to grit through, finding himself able to move well after a couple minutes of standing. Deciding to test this, he made a knife out of Nanites and stabbed the worktable to test the sharpness, finding it adequate for his test. He ran the blade along his skin to find it hold strong. Becoming more daring, he stabbed himself in the arm, getting the skin to bend but not break. He noted this down.

He focused the energy into his muscles now as well, and after what could be described as a few minutes of a heart attack in every muscle in his body after he fell to the floor, Adam got back up and tested his strength, only to find himself able to wrench one of his workbenches free of its bolts holding it to the concrete floor. He noted this down as well, then setting out to do the same process to his organs and connecting tissue. After feeling like his organs were failing for a few minutes, and after he relieved himself of his lunch, he looked into his own body again using the Brainlink to focus on his Energy Circuits and his body. He found the energy resting in his every cell, although he could feel his Energy Circuits draining slowly. He noted these down in his notepad and released the energy from his body, calling the process Energy Reinforcement.

He then focused on sending the energy running freely through his body, returning to his brain each time. He began to feel wisps of information about himself coming to his mind, the most important of which being his energy capacity and how much energy he has left, being down to less than fifty percent of his reserves from the testing.

"Hold up, I opened up the circuits with electricity, so what's stopping me from recharging them with electricity?"

Adam then set about trying to recharge his own circuits while getting better with Reinforcement.

* * *

_July 29th, 2549 CE_

* * *

He took a couple days fiddling with calculations and a new device designed to be surgically implanted into his back to get to this point. The device looks like a metal base plate with two thin coils placed atop each other around a ferrous rod. He hooked it in and sent it power, feeling himself be rejuvenated as well as slightly burned inside. Observing his own body with what he wrote in his notes as Energy Cycling, he noted his power recharged but his skin slightly burned where the wires connected the device to his back. Adam then implanted the device after he concluded that the wires should not be exposed like that to prevent burning.

Now with nothing better to do, Adam went back to one of his original fields of study, closely related to SPARTAN Tacpad technology and Pocket Dimension theory. Picking up a prototype device, he ran another test on it. The device looks like a small black hemisphere placed in a round metal base plate. This is supposed to be able to store Nanites inside it, many more Nanites than the mass or volume of it would suggest. Humming to himself in thought, Adam realizes that he has not tried sending his Internal Energy into an outside object. Picking up a screwdriver from the workbench, he focused on sending his energy into it to cycle around and return to himself. He began getting wisps of information on the screwdriver, such as chemical composition and the physical dimensions.

He took back his energy and then sent some into the black device itself, finding out a lot more than he thought he would get, such as the capacity of the device and mass negation of the space within. He spent the next hour using what he began to refer to as Structural Analysis to guide him on how to adjust the specs of the device. He eventually tuned it to become what is effectively a pocket dimension as large as Arcadia's moon, though its mass is entirely ignored. At this level, his Structural Analysis began returning some imaginary figures on the mass and volume, something he noted down for later. He finalized the tweaking and locked down the device.

He built the device into his upper back between his shoulder blades, intent on having it as close to his Brainlink as possible for ease of connection. The operation was a success so he walked to the workshop to send the Nanites into the device. The Nanites flew upwards and they began to vanish into the black hemisphere of the device. He glanced at the sync rate monitor in the workshop and did a double take, seeing it at full synchronization, noting down his theory of his Energy Circuits being the main reason for the sudden boost in synchronization. Adam took his time then using Structural Analysis on everything around him, including his compound's buildings, to gain a repertoire of things he can make with Nanites.

* * *

_August 1st, 2549 CE_

* * *

He began surfing the UNSC info network for information released to the public and came across severely outdated spacecraft designs from the 21st and 22nd Centuries. Deciding to use those as a base, Adam began modelling his own components for the next few weeks, testing them each after creating them with Nanites. He ended up with an electric turbine engine that can lift many times its own mass, a sort of electrical arcjet engine that seems to work well in low atmospheric pressure situations, as well as an old engine design based in quantum physics that relies on virtual particles in the vacuum of space. All three worked close to his expectations and so he saved their schematics to memory. He also saved an ion rocket engine design to memory for if he gets his hands on some noble gases to use.

He found a leaked schematic of an AI chip as well and decided to create a socket for one to connect to himself. He made one real one afterwards and built the socket into his lower skull just above the data storage module, replacing the plate with one that has an opening for any AI chip to go into.

* * *

_August 21st, 2549 CE_

* * *

Unleashing his creative mind, Adam spent the next few days creating schematics for his Nanites in whatever form his mind drifted to. One notable schematic was an EVA suit for if he ventures into space, but it relies on an external air supply.

"Wait. I made one for Nanites, can't I make a pocket dimension for air too?"

There's the ingenuity. He recreated the same hemisphere device as from before and set it to accept only air in the composition that is most healthy to mankind. It also maintains that composition within a margin of error by ejecting or over absorbing what is required. He built that between the Nanite hemisphere and the energy recharger on his back, connecting it to the Brainlink.

"I should probably organize these things now as well as my notes."

Adam sat down in another building, this one is not new but we have not followed him inside. It is his bedroom that doubles as a study. It has a simple bed fit for barely two people, a wide desk littered with small components and devices that have no useful purpose, a ceiling fan with a bright light bulb in the center, an armoire with his clothes inside it and a door on one of the walls adjacent to the wall with the entrance on it. That door likely being a washroom. He sat down in front of the desk.

"Okay, so, summary. I managed to successfully create the Brainlink, I can control my Nanites, I opened some previously unnoticed Energy Circuits in my body, I can use that Internal Energy to Reinforce myself or perform a Structural Analysis on an object to learn its structure and composition, I can also Cycle my Internal Energy within myself to gauge how much I have left, I can recharge my Internal Energy with the Energy Bioconverter presumably because of the Brainlink which I can feel through Cycling, I can make schematics to go in my Data Storage that I can then use to shape the Nanites quickly, I have also figured out how to create a pocket dimension although I cannot say how mathematically and I currently have two pocket dimension devices to store Nanites and breathable air. Wow, that is quite the list of achievements for the past month or so."

It is quite the list. Adam decided then to take a break and relax, a time to enjoy his time now that he has realized just how much he has managed to do.

"Wait. What if I try to force my energy into a small space in front of me?"

Ah. Instead of resting, Adam hooked up the Bioconverter to his compound's power and then focused on compressing his energy in front of himself. After several minutes of focus and actual sweating from exertion, a small light came into existence in front of him between his hands. Still pushing, the light grew steadily until it grew to the size of a golf ball and was almost too bright to look at. Adam eventually stopped and the ball of light fell to the ground, creating a 'thunk' as it hit the floor. He opened his eyes to see the softly glowing ball and could feel a large volume of his own energy inside it. Disconnecting from the grid power, he felt the orb with his energies, finding he could draw from it or push energy into it when needed. Recalling an Energy Center in his chest much like the one in his back that connects to the Bioconverter, he went to his operating room and embedded the orb into his chest, immediately feeling the energy connect like a battery in a circuit.

"That felt odd but welcome. I should note this down."

So he did. Adam called it a Body Capacitor due to it containing his own energy and being made from his own energy. He then finally allowed himself time to relax.

* * *

_August 24th, 2549 CE_

* * *

After a few days of surfing the info network, he noticed the orb pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

"Hah. I never noticed until now, but I feel like Iron Man with a blue glowing power source in my chest. Or maybe I should, ahem, Strive to make a spaceship from my Nanites and save a dying planet or something by destroying a giant black space emerald by shooting through it like a prismatic lens with five other cool pilots by my side. That would be fun."

Perhaps ignore his strange comment. The next day, Adam creates another hemispherical storage device, although this one is solid instead and has power terminals on the top of it. With Structural Analysis, he finds it to be effectively a colossal sized battery that can store massive potential electrical energy. He implants it into his back under the Bioconverter and connects it to both the Bioconverter as well as the Brainlink. As he goes about his following days, he is charging it up at a fast but steady pace while studying the composition of several different materials, building his repertoire of schematics. He developed one last hemisphere storage device, tuning it to accept noble gases only for the purpose of ion engine fuel. This he implanted below the energy hemisphere.

* * *

_August 28th, 2549 CE_

* * *

Experimentation with his energy led him to discover what he refers to as Alteration, which allows him to use his energy to shape something back to what it originally was or to shape something into something new. He also figured out how to Reinforce his eyes and ears in a specific regard to boost his senses, learning how to do so with touch, smell and taste. He can recognize a meter sized object with sight at over a few kilometers distance, can pick up a weak scent that has lingered for several days and trace where it came from, hear sounds up to ten decibels below regular humans and frequencies down to a couple hertz and up to the range of canines, taste and distinguish between flavors even down to a percent composition, or he can feel with his hands the tiniest imperfections on a surface. He does not use these enhanced senses however due to the headache he gains within a dozen seconds of activating just one of them. He notes this down as Information Overload due to Sensory Over-enhancement. He leaves all his senses on at a very slightly elevated level to train his brain to manage it all as he slightly Reinforces his brain as well.

* * *

_September 3rd, 2549 CE_

* * *

He tapped into the mass physics of what he has taken to calling Tuned Imaginary Number Space, given that the matter stored in the hemisphere modules is nullified. He applied this to a schematic design for a spacecraft that can take connected matter and reduce its inertial load in real space, thus theoretically allowing an aircraft to pull very hard turns without losing much velocity or requiring much power to get moving. A side effect is very low g-forces on whatever is within the craft due to the inertia nullification affecting anything within set boundaries, such as connected matter. He called this a G-Counter Module and it took him a few days to get working simulations.

Further study into this field over a couple more days yielded Adam a device he calls the Movement Converter Unit, which can take momentum in one direction and translate it towards another direction at a small loss. Simulations have this device able to make a spacecraft operate much like an aircraft in a vacuum, although it does draw large amounts of power when in operation.

* * *

_September 8th, 2549 CE_

* * *

One final schematic he downloaded directly was an old prototype of a warp drive shaped like a ring. It was never actually tested by the old NASA of Earth due to the invention of the Shaw-Fujiwara Translight Engine and the discovery of Slipspace. Adam installed the schematics for the Alcubierre Drive and went to sleep.

* * *

_Arcadia, Procyon System, UNSC Space._  
_September 9th, 2549 CE_  
_Historical Reference Name: Fall of Arcadia_

* * *

Adam woke up to the distant sound of gunfire. Peering out his window, he found his neighboring city in a panic, rising smoke and burnt red skies over the horizon. Suddenly awake once his brain relates the phenomenon, he realizes that he never noticed a battle happening and he began to scramble to get ready to set off on his own. No, he is not heartless, he noticed Pelicans in the city picking up the panicked civilians. In his mad rush to get himself prepared, he made a spaceship without thinking about its shape, opened its back end and began tossing things into it with his Reinforced strength where the Nanites began catching and arranging the cargo. Once he had stored his belongings and taken his equipment and robotics with him in the ship, he jumped inside with his Reinforced legs and closed the ship, quickly sitting in the command chair as it hooks into the modules in his back.

Adam gave himself a second to chuckle at his choice in spacecraft, finding himself sitting at a rounded display desk with two glowing orb control posts at his sides for his hands to rest upon. The command chair is a somewhat tall one that allows the pilot to quickly stand up. The ship is a large translucent dome design at the front over his position at the helm and the body is shaped somewhat like a teardrop. There are three turbine engine pods evenly spaced around the back end of the teardrop and long landing legs in a backwards tripod formation with turbines on the ends of them. All six turbines are now spinning at high speed. Once Adam places his hands on the orbs, long wings form out from the sides of the main body extending to double the length of the ship each, with fins forming from each of the back engine pods. Two turbines point downwards from the center of the wings and also spool up to speed.

Adam lets himself grin as the turbines on the legs and wings pitch their blades and the ship lifts quickly into the air, a light arcing of blue light coming from the engine exhausts. The g-forces are mostly nullified thanks to the G-Counter Module. As he reaches several hundred feet, Adam pitches the ship backwards as the legs return to storage and the wing engines turn to face forward again, the other three engines pitching their blades as the ship now accelerates forwards and up into the higher atmosphere, trailing a bit of blue behind each engine. The ship begins to slow slightly as the air gets thinner, so Adam changes the engines slightly to another design, going from turbojets to arcjets as the engines glow teal now, the ship accelerating once more.

As he continues into space, Adam takes a moment to look sadly down at his home planet to see the atmosphere getting hotter and hotter as the Covenant continues to Glass the planet. He catches sight of the giant cruiser hovering above Arcadia, beaming a ray of thermal death onto the capital city of the colony. As the ship is switched over to vacuum plasma engines glowing green, Adam presses a button on the desk in front of him, a holographic screen showing a recording prompt as seconds tick up.

"Adam Faraday, Captain's Log, September 9th of the year 2549 in the Common Era. I'm currently nearing orbital velocity in the UNSC Dream Of A Brighter Tomorrow above Arcadia in the Procyon System under the United Earth Government. It's on this sad day that Arcadia falls to a Covenant Glassing Beam. It was my home for over thirty years. I'm however glad that I got my research and belongings out intact, I can only hope this war won't get as bad as I fear it will. Captain Faraday, signing off."

The prompt closes at the press of a button, the log being named. The button is pressed again, the same prompt returning at the beginning.

"Adam Faraday, Engineer's Log, September 9th of the year 2549 in the Common Era. The Nanites are holding up well to the conditions I'm putting them through. They're not leaking air into space, they're each maintaining a specific type of material and doing well at simulating it, the engines are doing well and the connections to my Hemisphere Dimension Tanks are working smoothly. No problems reported. Major Faraday, signing off."

The prompt is closed and named, another opened.

"Adam Faraday, Scientist's Log, September 9th of the year 2549 in the Common Era. My Energy Circuits are responding as normal and don't seem to be affected by zero gravity or by being off a planetary surface. I can only conclude that Internal Energy is generated by the body and mind themselves. The connection to the Nanites through the Brainlink is also holding solid, extrasensory data isn't causing undue neural fatigue as of yet. Doctor Faraday, signing off."

The prompt is closed and Adam sighs. The ship is now reaching geosynchronous orbit. Adam then commands the Nanites to create an Alcubierre Drive around the body of the ship as well as having the wings retract back into storage. The ring fully forms and the supposed exotic matter reactor is brought online. With Structural Analysis, Adam can sense the matter slowly building up, running calculations with the shipboard computer as to how far the drive can take him. Finding he can make it to the next closest planet under the UEG, Adam waits for an hour for the drive to charge up as the ship accelerates to the proposed orbital velocity of his destination, points towards where the planet should be when he arrives, then activates the drive, watching as the burned husk of Arcadia quickly vanishes in the distance behind him.

"Well, it seems I'm off to new horizons once again, just on a much grander scale. I wonder what I'll find this time? A SPARTAN? A battle? A partner? Maybe I'll find a long lost sibling? An AI to stick in my head? Gosh, I hope I don't find an annoying one. Oh! Maybe I'll become some hero or something! That'd be cool. I could be like Iron Man with my glowing chest and cool flying armor that shoots energy from my hands. Wait, I could do that right now, couldn't I? I've got the ion fuel and plenty of power... Food for thought, yes."

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_End Of Chapter 0_

_Next Chapter:_

_Chapter 1 - First Step Into The Future_

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**A/N: Okay, some terminology to explain here.**

**Nanites**  
**They are small nano-scale robots consuming negligible electrical power that can form together and simulate almost any material in existence. A large amount of them appears as a fine black powder and with a signal from a computer processor, they can form into a shape or material defined by the computer. Adam's Brainlink allows him to connect to the Nanites and command them thanks to the small module he plugged into the data port. They have a kind of chromatic exterior that allows for changing colors and they naturally can power themselves with ambient light or a heat differential.**

**Brainlink**  
**It is a computer device that is wired into the brain. It allows a person to interface with computers to an extent and is based on Forerunner Composer technology.**

**Data Storage**  
**This refers to the 'solid state storage device' that is connected to Adam's Brainlink. It allows him to interface with the data inside and view through his mind's eye the data within as if it were opened through an appropriate viewing program on a normal computer. He can also create data using the Brainlink and store it in the SSSD.**

**AI Chip Socket**  
**This is what every SPARTAN super solider has integrated into their helmets. It allows them to insert an AI Chip that lets the AI interface with them by way of hologram and speakers. Adam has the capability now to interface with one directly through the Brainlink.**

**Energy Circuits**  
**This refers to what are called Magic Circuits in the Nasuverse. Adam unlocked his in a very odd way by forcing electricity into his Brainlink and focusing it into his locked Magic Circuits, creating a temporary Nerve Circuit, and forcing them open while they were connected to the Brainlink. He is no longer completely human anymore due to his circuits, which should be flowing with Prana and Od, flowing with some form of Electrical Prana instead. You could also say his circuits are a bastardized combination of Nerve Circuits and Magic Circuits.**

**Internal Energy**  
**This refers to Prana. Adam's brand is more a form of some kind of Electrical Prana that might be found inside a clockwork doll with an artificial human brain or soul designed to be basically a robot Master in the Holy Grail War. His Prana can be likened to a mixture of electricity, Od and Prana from both circuit types.**

**Hemisphere Dimension Tank**  
**This refers to the hemispherical modules in Adam's back that can store large quantities of matter in an effective Pocket Dimension. The interaction is between the realms of Slipspace, Pocket Dimension theory and Nasuverse's Imaginary Number Space. The four types he currently has can store Nanites, breathable atmosphere, electrical power and ion fuel which is basically a mixture of noble gases.**

**Tuned Imaginary Number Space**  
**This is Adam's special brand of extra-dimensional storage that stores matter in an inertia-less state on what could effectively be described as the Reverse Side of the Imaginary Number Space of a Slipspace bubble within a contained Pocket Dimension of non-Euclidean geometry. Yes, don't question it. Adam doesn't know what he's done.**

**Reinforcement**  
**It is the same as in the Nasuverse. It consumes Prana to reinforce the skin, bones, muscles and organs of the Magus. It can also improve performance of a body part, increasing strength, sensory range and power, durability, healing rate, processing speed, reaction time and even allowing multiple 'rooms' of thought.**

**Energy Bioconverter**  
**Due to Adam's unique constitution due to the Brainlink and his electrical Magic Circuits, he is able to recharge his Prana with electrical power. As a result, one of the modules implanted in his back is a very high density electrical power storage.**

**Body Capacitor**  
**Basically, this is a Philosopher's Stone, except not really, since its more like a crystal of, well, crystallized Prana that ended up forming due to an extremely high concentration of Prana in one point in space. The crystal is attuned to the Prana of the individual who formed it and can act as a Prana storage medium to expand the capacity of one's Magic Circuits. In terms of the Philosopher's Stone, this is more an incomplete one that also passively increases the physical attributes of the Magus over time.**

**Structural Analysis**  
**This is the same technique as the one from the Nasuverse. It is done by cycling one's Prana in an object until it takes on the likeness of the object, from which the Prana after it is returned gives the Magus information on the very makeup of the object.**

**Cycling**  
**This is basically a self Structural Analysis on one's own Magic Circuits. A Magus in the Nasuverse generally does this by nature to always know just how much Prana they have left.**

**Alteration**  
**Exactly as it is in the Nasuverse. Sending Prana into an object, you can impart your will on it to change the structure of an object. With this, one can spend Prana to transform a steel pipe into a machete or a set of knives.**

**Sensory Over-enhancement**  
**Just what you think it means. It can easily cause Information Overload, which is when the brain cannot process the information it is taking in fast enough and ends up backlogged and overloaded, raising blood pressure and causing headaches and can even end in an aneurysm or eventual death. Over-enhancement of the senses causes the senses to take in too much data.**

**G-Counter Module**  
**A device that utilizes Imaginary Number Space theory to reduce or even nearly nullify the inertia of an object, or in the case of this device, connected matter. This also means that if you are within a spacecraft using a G-Counter Module, the space within is considered 'connected matter' thus reducing your inertial load. Everything inside would feel normal, however, as even one's strength and physical durability is affected by the laws of inertia in Imaginary Number Space.**

**Movement Converter Unit**  
**A device utilizing space-rending theories to translate momentum in one direction to another direction relative to the direction of movement. It cannot do this instantly and it draws a lot of electricity to bend space-time, as a result of the energy draw however it loses a fraction of the momentum, with a whole ten percent loss for a momentum reversal.**

**Shaw-Fujiwara Translight Engine**  
**A warp-drive developed by the UNSC that allows the vessel to rip open a hole in space-time that connects to Slipspace where the vessel can rapidly travel to a distant target in short time. It allows the effective bypass of the speed of light by traveling through a far 'shorter' plane of space-time. This technology is based upon Forerunner technology like many state-of-the-art UNSC equipment and ship systems are.**

**Alcubierre Drive**  
**Exactly as NASA has said it would be in our day-and-age. It is a large warp ring that is charged by exotic matter and it isolates a bubble of space-time from the rest of the universe, forcing outside space-time to expand behind the bubble and contract in front of it. The method of the movement of space-time is similar to a ramjet engine where air, or space-time, is sucked in and spit back out behind at a higher velocity. This version however due to Slipspace and Imaginary Number Space requires some implementation of non-Euclidean Geometry to treat the bubble as a point with zero dimensions that can redefine its location. Since it requires an anchor, it has a maximum change rate of its position, effectively handled as a velocity, which exceeds the speed of light by a factor over a hundred while maintaining zero real movement.**

**Anyways, I do hope you enjoyed this prologue chapter. Hopefully I can make the first real chapter smoother than this one was, so see you in the next one!**

**This has been Avetho, now signing off!**


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